Nigeria has announced plans to build international rail lines that would connect the country with neighbours.
Speaking to the media, the Minister for Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaecchi, stated that the poor state of Nigeria’s transport sector was mainly due to the absence of a national transportation policy to coordinate and drive the growth of the industry since the country’s independence in 1960. The Federal Government was working to ensure that the 25year railway master plan was implemented.
Amaechi promised that the government was working to ensure that his ministry’s 25-year railway master plan was implemented.
Part of the plan by the government is to complete the total rehabilitation of all the narrow gauge rail lines and put them to use. To construct and complete some standard gauge lines in selected corridors across the country, like the Itakpe-AJaokuta-Warri rail line, and undertake various visibility studies with a view to connecting all state capitals, agricultural and industrial clusters by rail.
The government will also make provision for some international linkages by rail to our neighboring nations, thus leveraging the ECOWAS arrangement and other continental protocols.”
According to the Minister, The ministry’s mandate was mainly tailored towards problem identification/analysis, policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation, but regretted the abysmal performance of the sector. We just concluded the 2017 edition of the National Council on Transportation in Sokoto State where two inter-ministerial committees involving relevant stakeholders were set up to handle two pressing issues in the sector.”
He stated that the committee on the finalization of the National Transport Policy document, which is before the Federal Executive Council and National Economic Council, had been tasked to ensure that the policy was approved, as the outcome of its work would take the sector many steps ahead.
Ameachi also said that many legal and regulatory framework instruments of agencies in the transportation sector were obsolete, adding that it was in the interest of the country to give out the airports to private operators as a concession. “Under our watch, the four transport sector reform bills have undergone various public hearing stages in both chambers of the National Assembly,” the minister stated.
The Minister listed the transport reform bills before the country’s legislature to include the National Inland Waterways Authority Bill, 2015, which seeks to repeal the National Inland Waterways Authority Act Cap 47 LFN 2004; and the Nigerian Ports and Harbour Bill 2015, which seeks to repeal the Nigerian Ports Authority Act CAP 126 LFN 2004.
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Others are the Nigerian Railways Authority Bill, 2015, which seeks to repeal the Nigerian Railways Authority Act CAP 129 LFN 2004; and the National Transport Commission Bill, which is an act to provide for the establishment of the National Transport Commission as an independent multimodal economic regulator and other related matters. Currently, the Federal Government is discussing with General Electric on the concession agreement on the Rail Project.
